Understanding where people are when they open your emails is a standard part of the customer journey planning we do with clients.

You must consider where they are in their lives, in the buying cycle, and where they physically are when they get your email.

We wrote earlier about the easy win you can get by sending certain email campaigns on the weekend, when your competitors are all at the beach.  Why marketers should work weekends.  It’s obvious that the time of day and week will affect what your reader is doing and what device they are consuming your email on.

So, what are the most popular email clients in use in 2015?  Litmus do a great job of monitoring email providers as part of the measurement of a billion emails around the world in June 2015.  Their latest figures show email chasing other digital trends and understanding where your own audience of customers and prospects sits will help you get your emails rendering as well as they can, and generating the actions you want them to.

Key email platform trends

Mobile is up another 6.5% in the year to June 2015

If your email is not readable and your links are not ‘poke’-able on mobile, it’s time they were.  Mobile opens hit just under 50% of all opens, far above webmail at 29% and desktop at 22%.

iPhone on Top

In total iOS email opens make up nearly 40% of the total. That’s iPhone at the most popular of all at 28% and iPad at 11%.

But iPad falls back

Declining iPad sales, and possibly the cannibalising of iPad users with the giant iPhone 6 Plus are reflected in declining iPad email opens.

Android Gains

Google Android has gained 19% in the past 6 months.

Gmail Up

Gmail opens rose 20% YOY.

Outlook is fading

Outlook continues to drop, with a 30% drop in the last 12 months alone. From it’s peak of 37% it now sits at just 9%.

Overall, Webmail gains market share over desktop email programs.

There is no such thing as ‘perfect’ mobile responsive email – you need to pick your best bets and optimise for that. And keep testing to see if you see a lift or decline in response.

Read the original post at Litmus here.